


Like A Resting Place

by callmelyss



Category: Crash Pad (2017), Logan Lucky (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Awkwardness, Fluff, Humor, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Minor Violence, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, kylux adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-22 00:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmelyss/pseuds/callmelyss
Summary: “Oh, honestly, this is getting ridiculous,” Stens protests. “How are you even doing that? I’m bigger than you are, for Peter, Paul and Mary’s sakes.”“You sure about that?” Mellie Logan says. Hefting him a little in her tanned arms, one braced under his knees, the other below his shoulders. It’s a new indignity in this place every day, even after a month. A petite, pretty girl judging his weight like he’s a calf at a county fair as she hauls him out the Duck Tape’s back door is just the most recent blow to his sensitive ego. “Taller, yeah, but you ain’t very heavy. Barely any meat on your bones.”“Look, just because I have a willowy build—“





	Like A Resting Place

**Author's Note:**

> In further prompt fodder from @kylux-adjacent-prompts: "Five times Stensland was carried/bridal carried. And the one time he (tried to) carry someone else."

 

**(1)**

Clyde nudges the door of the emergency clinic open with one foot and angles his way in careful as he can—not the easiest task with his arms full of squirming redhead, but he does his best. Tries not to smack his charge’s head on one wall or bump his injured foot on the other. In spite of the aforementioned squirming, he manages to avoid both.

“Really, this just seems unnecessary,” the redhead says, for the eighth or ninth time. He’s been talking a lot; Clyde’s only half-listening.

“Oh, you can walk then?” Clyde asks. “My mistake.” He moves to set him down.

He yelps even before any pressure can land on his foot, and Clyde resettles him in his arms; he wasn’t really going to let him stand on that ankle. It’s already swollen up like a watermelon in August. “Okay, okay, point taken. Just, not to sound ungrateful, but do you have to be so, I don’t know, manly and prepossessing about it? It’s emasculating enough getting toted around like a swooning ingenue without you looking like…that.”

Clyde does not respond to this, isn’t sure how to change how he looks on a moment’s notice anyway. Instead, he approaches the intake station and greets the iron-faced matron behind the plexiglass: “Hey there, Gladys.”

She doesn’t look up from her typing. “Clyde. Been a while since we seen you.” There was once a generous interval when the Logan boys were in and out of this waiting room three times a week. Gladys had been sitting here then, too, wearing the same incongruously cheerful Winnie the Pooh scrubs she favors now. “Whatcha got there?” 

“City boy what took a tumble down Jericho’s Bluff and busted up his foot.” 

“Bluff seems awfully generous; it was just a very steep, very slippery, very inconveniently located hill,” said city boy corrects from the cradle of Clyde’s arms. “And it wasn’t my fault. There was a bear and a snake and a hive of angry bees and no one tells you when you go off into the woods to find yourself that there will be _snakes and bears and hives of angry bees_.“

“Think he mighta hit his head, too,” Clyde offers. 

“I did _not_ ; this is just how I talk.”

“Gonna need his intake forms.” Gladys hands Clyde a clipboard.

“‘course,” Clyde says. Takes it with his robotic hand and tucks it under his arm.

“—and to misquote the late, great Robin Williams quoting the later, greater Henry David Thoreau in the inspirational _Dead Poets Society_ , you have to suck the marrow out of life and live deliberately—“

“Shouldn’t be but a minute.”

“Thanks, Gladys.”

He manages to set his cargo down in two plastic chairs without jostling him too bad, or, indeed, without disrupting his train of thought at all, which continues unabated, all delivered in a rolling Irish brogue. Clyde squints at the clipboard and starts checking off boxes. _Reason for visit: fell down hill_.

“—and it’s not _my_ fault I’m not very butch. I am a proud curmudgeonly homebody who likes his slippy socks and his memory-foam and his Mr. Bubble, but all the articles say the woods are the place for self-actualization—”

“Hey,” Clyde interrupts, tapping the toe of his uninjured foot with a pen. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Oh,” he says. Incessant monologue coming to a halt with a blink. “Right. It’s Stensland.”

 _First or last_ , he chooses not to ask, wary of receiving another monologue in response. Just writes _Stensland_ at the top of the form.

“Clyde Logan.” He offers his hand.

Stensland clasps it loosely, not much of a handshake, but he smiles in a way that brightens his eyes. They’re an unusual shade of gray-green, which might look drab under the fluorescents and the circumstances, but when he smiles, they gleam. “Hello there, Clyde Logan. Pleased to meet you.”

“Good to meet you, too.”

 

* * *

  

**(2)**

Stens is floating.

Well, more accurately, he’s being held aloft by a stern-looking beefcake in a John Fogerty t-shirt. But he _feels_ like he’s floating.

They had given him a very liberal dose of analgesic at the emergency clinic. The attending physician, also apparently well-acquainted with the grave beefcake—whose name is Clive or Clop or something like that, Stens will remember when his head clears because he always does, has a knack for names—had expressed real astonishment that he wasn’t in more pain, given the severity of the fracture.

Probably he should have mentioned how stoned he was when he took his tumble down the hill. He had been on a quest for self-knowledge after all, and what better for it than a little herbal assistance? But it’s too late to do anything about that now. So he lets himself float, gently tethered to the mountain (of a) man who rescued him. He smells like books and yeast and wood shavings. _Good_ smells. 

Stens pats his cheek and says, “Nice mountain,” dreamily.

“Forty-five,” a voice drawls over the PA.

Stens blinks. They’re in a bright white room, and the fuzzing lights hurt his eyes. Up at the front, a woman in a red smock is hearing the supplications of the assembled. “Where are we again?”

“Pharmacy,” the man—Clovis, Custer?—tells him and shuffles him in his arms a little to check their ticket. “You’re number fifty-two.”

He’s very stable, the beefcake (Cornwall?), and holds Stens easily. Not that this is Stens’ first time being carried, not even close. Inevitable really, when one is as spindly and flailing and has as low an alcohol tolerance as he does. But most people haul him around like an ungainly sack of potatoes. This gentle-sir has a very careful hold on him. He puts Stens in mind of one of those very big rescue dogs like a St. Bernard.

“Are you a fireman?” he asks.

The man (Cauliflower?) frowns down at him like he’s not entirely sure how he’s ended up with an armful of Stensland to begin with—which is not an unfamiliar sentiment or expression in the ongoing history of Stenslands. “No, I am not.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, you absolutely could be,” Stens says. Trying to sound encouraging.

Before he can respond, a voice behind them says, “Well, if it ain’t Clyde Logan. And, uh, who’s your blushing bride there?”

 _Clyde_ , of course. Yes. Like Clydesdale. Clyde. Clyde Clydesdale.

“Big horsey,” Stens supplies helpfully.

Clyde gives him a concerned look before turning to greet the newcomer. “Joe, this is Stensland. Stensland, this is Joe Bang.”

Joe Bang is shorter than Clyde—and probably Stens, if Stens were standing, which would be a very bad idea indeed, he knows—with bleach-blonde hair and hard blues eyes and a lot of ink scrawled over tanned skin. He looks like the sort of person Grady would represent (if Joe Bang could afford him). “Another Logan misadventure, I’m guessin’,” he says, looking between Clyde and Stensland.

Whatever explanation Clyde might offer in response is interrupted by a crooning ringtone and soft vibration in his hip pocket. “Damn. That’s probably work,” he says mildly. “Can you—?”

And before anyone can say anything, he deposits Stens in the less-burly-but-still-impressive arms of Joe Bang, retrieves his phone, and moves away to speak.

“Hey now!” Joe Bang protests. “I have errands to run!”

“Er,” Stens says, breaking the lull that follows this objection. “I…nice neck tattoo? _Tattoos_. Wowee.”

He squints at him. “Now who do you look like?”

“Are you a fan of the acclaimed children’s book series _Harry Potter?_ If you are, I probably look like a Weasley,” Stens tells him. “I get that a lot.” 

“Naw, that ain’t it,” Joe Bang says, sort of glaring at him now. Or maybe that’s his default expression. Difficult to say. “Could have sworn I’ve seen that face before, though. You ever been to prison?” 

“No, although I did attempt to blackmail a paramour once and then got blackmailed _myself_ with the threat of subsequent judicial action. Which in itself, I realize now, was also illegal. No winners in that scenario.”

“Huh,” Joe says.

 

* * *

 

 **(3)**  

Fair to say that in all the many years Clyde’s known Earl, he’s brought him odder parcels. Fish Bang’s prized banjo that one time. A not-actually-dead-but-we-surely-thought-it-was opossum on another occasion. An honest-to-god Civil War cannon from Harper’s Ferry, which had weighed the better part of two thousand pounds—that had been an eventful day. Still, a fast-asleep Irishman from Seattle (for some reason Clyde still can’t parse) ranks pretty high up there. Stensland’s passed out in Earl’s arms, dead to all the world and using his clasped hands for a pillow, his broken ankle hanging heavy in its cast. Earl’s leaned his crutches up against the side of the house.

“In the backseat of a Ford Fiesta,” he says, by way of explanation. “Belongs to you, don’t he?”

“You know he don’t,” Clyde insists. “That was one time.” Although it’s closer to a dozen by now probably.

Earl, having already expended a dozen precious words on the subject, shrugs and holds out the tangle of lanky limbs and fluffy hair and indecipherable pop culture references otherwise known as Stensland (indeterminate as a first or last name as of yet). _Ain’t no ‘one time’ about it, Clyde Logan_. _You’re responsible_ , the gesture declares _._

Which appears to be the community consensus, because whenever someone’s concerned about Stensland—and for all that he’s been here a week the whole town seems to know him and is keeping a careful eye on him—they come to him. Your new friend wandered into the wrong biker bar, Clyde; that out-of-towner you brought by offended the Purple Lady, Clyde, and she’s fixin’ to call the po-lice; that Irish fella of yours wandered down I-77 again, Clyde. 

Clyde sighs and accepts said bundle. Is not a bit moved when Stensland shifts in his grip and settles against his chest with a contented sigh, even nuzzles his shirt with his cheek.

He’s got to stop doing this.

“Ta.” Satisfied he’s fulfilled his obligation, Earl taps his brim and then he’s gone.

Clyde deposits Stensland on the sofa in the den. When he hits the cushions, he curls up a little, drawing his knees up to his chest. Hard to say whether he always sleeps like a log or if it’s the painkillers doing it to him. Probably they are why he keeps conking out in random spots (even though he has a perfectly good room at the Motel 6 while his foot heals up). He fell asleep in a sand trap on the country club’s golf course the day before yesterday. 

Fortunately, Moody’s membership hadn’t lapsed just yet.

No doubt about it: this skinny chatterer is trouble. Attracts it like a magnet. A magnet in bird shirts and puffy vests and socks with sandals. And Clyde thought _Logans_ had lousy luck. It’s impressive, in a way, that Stensland has lasted this long, that he sleeps the sleep of the perennially optimistic, nothing worse than the air conditioning disturbing his rest. (He’s shivering.)

Clyde scratches the back of his neck, sighs again, then snags a blanket off the arm of the sofa. Spreads it over his guest.

He’ll read until he wakes up. And _when_ he wakes up, they can have a talk. Clyde can’t afford this kind of bother; he has his own bad fortune to deal with, thank you, and his own problems, too. He’s done as Appalachian hospitality requires and more—seen that Stensland has food and a place to stay and had his injuries tended to—and he’s perfectly within his rights to leave him to his fate, if he’d only stop turning up like a bad penny.

Never mind that he can hear his mother’s voice, clear as church bells: _kindness, Clyde_.

Never mind at all that he can hear Mel too: _you_ like _him, don’t ya?_

And never mind _in the slightest_ the way Stensland’s brow crinkles, just so, when he’s especially touched by something’s Clyde done for him, or that unfettered, oh-so-friendly smile given so freely, or the rapid-fire patter that cracks even Clyde’s most resolute silences.

He will not be offering to let Stensland stay with him until he’s back on his feet, no sir.

 

* * *

 

**(4)**

“Oh, honestly, this is getting ridiculous,” Stens protests. “How are you even doing that? I’m bigger than you are, for Peter, Paul and Mary’s sakes.”

“You sure about that?” Mellie Logan says. Hefting him a little in her tanned arms, one braced under his knees, the other below his shoulders. It’s a new indignity in this place every day, even after a month. A petite, pretty girl judging his weight like he’s a calf at a county fair as she hauls him out the Duck Tape’s back door is just the most recent blow to his sensitive ego. “Taller, yeah, but you ain’t very heavy. Barely any meat on your bones.”

“Look, just because I have a willowy build—“

“Besides, I dunno what happened to your crutches in all the ruckus, so this is faster. Car’s not far.” She makes her way across the parking lot, loose gravel crunching under her cowboy boots. “Clyde said to get you outta there ‘fore it got uglier, you not being from around here and all, so that’s what I mean to do. And anyway, you’re the one who fainted.” This last sounds vaguely accusatory.

Stensland scowls and folds his arms across his chest. “I did not _faint_ , I only got a smidgen lightheaded seeing so much blood because, maybe you missed it, _I got punched in the face—“_ There’s still some wet drying tacky on his upper lip. He’d wipe it away—it’s probably not very appealing to look at—but the sight of it on his sleeve would make him dizzy again and he’s not in the mood for any Teutonic-inspired dreams today.

“Shouldn’t go around starting fights if you’re gonna faint,” Mellie points out. Unhelpful, but not inaccurate. At minimum, his aversion to blood presents a practical obstacle, although no more so than his general…flimsiness.

“I do not start fights, Mellie Logan. I am a pacifist to my core. The epitome of a lover, not a fighter. My face is just inexplicably attractive to some people’s knuckles. Also, the gentleman in question was a _jerk_.”

(A jerk who had insulted Clyde Logan, but Stens is not about to tell his sister that.)

“Bet you’ve never even hit nobody before,” she says. Lips quirking. Devastatingly pretty, she is. And she smells like peaches and ethyl acetate. 

“I have so hit someone,” Stens retorts. Then admits, because he’s honest to a fault: “It did not go very well.”

“I’m sure it didn’t. Here we are.” She sets him down to balance on one foot while she rummages for her keys.

He leans against the car, a sky-blue Dodge Charger, admiring her. Daisy Dukes and a macramé white top over a neon orange bra. Yes, indeed, Mellie Logan is a veritable _looker_ , to borrow the local parlance.

She snaps her fingers in front of his face. “Hey now, none of that,” she says. “Eyes up here.”

Stens winces and raises both hands in pitiful surrender. “Sorry, sorry. I know you’re completely out of my league.”

“‘Salright,” she says, helping him into the passenger seat. “Just don’t be doing that when you’re with my brother, understand? Or you’re gonna get worse than a bop on the nose from me.” She taps said feature with the end of one long, magenta nail to emphasize this point and closes the door.

“I just don’t know if I’m ever going to find a girl _in_ my league. I’m not even sure what my league is. Every woman who’s ever liked me only did for a while and then they were done with me. Discarded like day-old chowder. I guess I don’t blame them. I come on too strong, I know. Some people just fall in love so easily and I am one of them, a dewy-eyed romantic in 2018, born in the wrong era—hang on there, what did you say about your brother?”

“Nothin’,” Mellie replies firmly. Fastens her seatbelt. “You must be hearing things. Should probably get that head of yours checked out. Now, you buckle on up, buttercup.”

 

* * *

**(5)**  

Clyde snuffles awake, heart pounding before he recognizes his own den: the blue glow of the television, the shelves and shelves of books, the _Mad Max_ poster on the wall. He squints at the clock: _2:20 am_. He must have dozed off.

Stens murmurs and shifts next to him, unsettled, no doubt, by the unexpected movement, his head lolling on Clyde’s shoulder. A scattering of root beer bottles and popcorn litters the coffee table; a half-smoked joint sits in the saucer Stens uses as an ashtray. That’s right. They’d been celebrating him getting his cast removed, finally; Clyde even took the night off work for the occasion. They watched romantic comedies, and Stens explained all the relevant tropes, especially the grand, dramatic airport chases at the end.

“Couldn’t do that today,” Clyde pointed out. “TSA would tackle you in a minute.”

“True,” he sighed. Wistful.

In a couple days, Mellie’s driving Stensland to the airport in Charlotte, and Clyde will have the house to himself again. Can air out the sickly-sweet smell of marijuana and get rid of the strawberry pop-tarts in the pantry and turn Jimmy’s room into a gym like he’s been meaning to for a while now. He won’t have to worry about Stensland wandering off or getting picked up by the state troopers or running afoul of the Bang brothers.  Yeah, finally, after six weeks, he’ll have his home and his life back. It’s all he wants.

Stens makes a small sound of protest when he goes to get up, grumbles a little at Clyde’s sudden absence before he settles back down on the couch cushions. Clyde could leave him where he is; it wouldn’t be the first time he’s slept out here instead of in the guest room. 

He won’t, though. It’s easy enough, by now, to scoop Stensland into his arms like he has on countless other occasions in the past several weeks. Shit, how many times has he carried him to bed now? He won’t think about how routine it is, how Stens’ arms go, even when he’s asleep, unaware of everything, automatically around Clyde’s neck. How he mumbles and tucks his head under his chin. How his hair smells like Clyde’s shampoo, like _Clyde_.

He maneuvers him through the door, easy as pie, practiced at this now. At settling him on the bed (he sleeps right-center, favors that pillow). At drawing the covers up over him (he runs cold). At brushing one hand over his forehead, drawing his thumb across his cheek (because, well). 

He goes to move away like he always does, except there’s a tug on his wrist. Stens is looking up at him through the fluff of his hair, everything about him just _soft_ , and something seizes under Clyde’s sternum when he says, “Stay.” 

He swallows. “I—“

Another little tug. Barely enough to move him, and if he wanted to, he could break Stensland’s grip without thinking about it. “C’mon, stay,” he says. 

“You ain’t hardly awake,” Clyde tries.

“I’m awake,” he says. Clears his throat and blinks. “I am very much awake.”

“Stens—“

“Clyde, please?”

And hell, that _please_ about does him in; he’s not going to make Stensland beg for anything, not when he looks like this. Not when he sounds like that. Not ever. Couldn’t, even if he wanted to, even if he were the type, and that’s been the trouble from the start. He’s been foolish for a pair of green eyes and a congenial smile and endless digressions since a flailing mess of arms and legs and red hair tumbled down a hill in front of him. So when Stens pulls again, he goes, just easy—and it is, easy as can be—back onto the bed where he wants him. 

Those skinny arms move to circle his neck again, drawing him close and down for a kiss, and maybe it should surprise him that Stensland’s a pretty good kisser, tender, sure, confident, but it doesn’t, not at all. He tastes like sugar and salt and a little like pot smoke, and he chuckles at the sensation of Clyde’s beard on his chin, and it’s the very best thing.

They continue like that for longer than Clyde can say, everything warm and gentle and slow, until a realization kicks a startled laugh out of him, and Stens pulls back, confused. “Hm?”

“Was just thinkin’,” Clyde explains. “Now I don’t got to chase you through Charlotte Douglas airport.”

 

* * *

 

 **(x)**  

An alarm goes off on the bedside table. Probably Clyde’s by the sound of it, that crooning sort of country music he favors. Stens slaps at the offending phone, annoyed, knocking it onto the floor, where it continues to wax melancholic about heartache or some such. He makes a wordless noise of frustration and jams his pillow over his ears, thinking every unkindness he can at the singer. 

Not that he can’t relate, given his long and misfortunate history with romance. Only, he doesn’t have much to complain about now, not with six-feet and two inches of fantastically naked Clyde Logan stretched out in his bed. One heavy, well-muscled arm is flopped over Sten’s middle. Clyde’s horseshoe ring glitters in the dim light. 

No, he has very little to complain about in the love department these days.

 _“For some a way of living, for some a way to feel_ ,” the song continues, plaintive.

In the relentless wake-up call department, yes, definitely, he has some complaints. He groans again and leans halfway off the bed until he can snag the offending device off the floor. Silences the music with a satisfying click. Squints at the display. Sits bolt upright.

“Oh _Jesus_ , is that the time?” he says. _10:45 am._

“Mrph,” Clyde contributes, helpfully, and nestles deeper into the blankets. 

“Clyde.” Stens shoves at his arm. “ _Clyde_. Your flight’s at 12:30.”

The weekend has gone all too quickly, as they tend to—which isn’t to say the long distance isn’t worth it, it is. They see each other once a month, Skype twice a week, talk on the phone and text more or less constantly. Stens doesn’t mind it; Clyde Logan is worth a lot more trouble than that.

But if he misses his _plane_ , there will be fees and—Stensland shakes him again. “Come on, you have to get up.” No response. He huffs, exasperated. “Don’t make me carry you.”

Clyde rumbles his amusement into the pillows. “‘d like to see you try, darlin’.”

It’s become something of an ongoing joke between the two of them that Stensland threatens to carry Clyde somewhere. Given how they met—and the six weeks following—he considers it a fitting revenge. Or he would, if he could only pull it off. As of yet, he’s barely been able to move him an inch. Like now, when he shuffles over to Clyde’s side of the bed and tries to get two hands under him. _Heaves_. And… nothing.

“I don’t know why I thought that work,” he admits and scratches his head. Sighs, looking down at the inert lump of Logan he’s meant to see off at the airport in an hour, and plants his hands on his hips. “Look, not all of us get to be a muscle-bound Heracles with quivering pectorals and what have you who can lift a grown man without breaking a sweat—or his lower lumbar region.”

“Like you just fine the way you are,” Clyde says. Still speaking into the bedclothes. “Also there’s nothin’ to worry about; I rescheduled my flight.”

“Some of us have to make do with being waifish and pasty and rely on our natural endearing qualities. And if we get very lucky sometimes we might fall down a hill in the exact right part of West Virginia to _meet_ a muscle-bound Heracles with quivering pectorals and—did you say you rescheduled your flight?”

“I did say that, yes.”

And, true, Stens can’t drag Clyde onto his back through sheer force of will or any feat of physical strength, but the thing is, he doesn’t have to—Clyde rolls over, obligingly, and ends up with his arms full of Stensland, as he has so often since the day they met.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, predictably, from the John Denver/Plácido Domingo duet "Perhaps Love."
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
